Natural Gas and Coal: Commodities Tied at the Hip

The point is that the shortages of natural gas will have to be made up with coal — the two commodities are tied at the hip. Check out this old article excerpt from 2019:

Clothing and drinking bottles made from coal? In China, that's more and more the case. Widely viewed in much of the world as dirty, planet warming, and on its way to obsolescence, coal is on the ascent in China's chemical industry, where it is increasingly a raw material for making polyester fiber and resin.

China's chemical industry is at a chronic cost disadvantage compared with other countries' because of a lack of domestic crude oil and natural gas. But China has a lot of coal. China produces millions of metric tons of polyvinyl chloride, polyolefins, and liquid fuels every year using coal as a raw material.

Until recently, polyester wasn't on the list of materials made from coal, but this is changing rapidly. Relatively new processes that use coal to obtain ethylene glycol – a raw material for making polyester fiber and packaging resin – have gained traction in China.